Mae govannen! A couple of characters in the game I run have wanted to explore some magic. I thought I would share with y’all what I came up with in case any of you have been thinking about it.

The characters are a Beorning and a Dúnedain. The Dúnedain is a Scholar that impressed Radagast, and the Beorning wrote into her background that she comes from a line of women considered witches. Obviously Middle-earth is a low magic setting so I came up with some custom Virtues for them.

Wizard’s Pupil and Witch of the Wilds are what I called them. They work similarly; upon taking the virtue, the character learns one of three spells. The options for Wizard’s Pupil are Light, Produce Flame and Guidance. The options for Witch of the Wilds are Goodberry, Fog Cloud and Speak with Animals (yes, I know those are more powerful... we’ll get to that).

After learning the first spell from those lists, a character may learn another during a subsequent Fellowship undertaking, until they have learned all three. A character may cast a spell a number of times per adventuring phase equal to the total number of spells they know. A character may cast a spell an additional time by spending a hit die; if the character does not have any hit die to spend, they may still cast the spell, but will take a point of Shadow.

Wizard‘s Pupil, once mastered, will give way to other abilities that lets the player learn more spells. Witch of the Wilds won’t; thematically one Virtue is learning magic from a wizard, the other is having an innate magical connection to nature.

Hope that helps someone!